Coromandel

Ernie is fishing today so I've had a quiet day catching up on reading, e-mails, blogging, hot tubbing and stuff like that. In other words, no driving or sightseeing today and that's a good thing!

On Monday, we drive to Waihi to ride the Goldfields Railway and visit the now closed Victoria Battery (the old gold and silver processing center.) What was so interesting was seeing the ore kilns. These were holes up to 15 meters across and 20 or more meters deep. They were used in the early days of the mines and only for 3 years. The quartz that was mined was then mixed in these pits with lumber and then set on fire. They burned for 4 days allowing the quartz to become superheated and start to fracture. The rocks were then carted off to the stamping factory where they were crushed. They eventually stopped this process because they (town folks and mining management) realized they have totally denuded the surrounding forest and basically ran out of fuel. Can you imagine? They then switched to a crushing and chemical process that involved cyanide. What was even more amazing was that the powers that be - at that time - early 1900s - allowed the mining company to just empty all the sludge and waste into the Ohinemui River and totally polluting it. The guard on the train said that as a kid he couldn't swim in the river because it was so toxic. Needless to say, the dumping stopped and a concerted effort was made by the government to clean it up. Today, it is considered the purest river in the north island.

 This was the train engineer (driver). He stopped to talk with us and ask how we were enjoying NZ. While we were answering him, he was sizing up Ernie. He then turned to me and said I was doing a good job of taking care of him and that he was a good size boy. His final remark to me was to keep up the good work!

These ladies worked the station selling tickets and providing information. The also made the departure announcements and saw us off once the train started moving.

There was only 2 cars on the trains and we stayed in the open car. 

This is one of the original trestle bridges built in 1905

The train station in Waikino. The ride was only 30 minutes but we had a great time and super weather!

These are the ore kilns. There were 8 of them and the Department of Conservation has excavated 6 of them to date.

OK had to get in a photos of us!
















We are actually staying in Mount Maunganui which is a one hour drive south of the Coromandel region. On Tuesday, we drove 2 1/2 hours into the Coromandel region to the Hot Water Beach. This was such a unique experience and what a treat! We stopped at the cafe just before the car park and hired (rented) a spade so we could dig our pool. We got to the car park, along with 100+ of our closest friends and followed the crowd to the beach. You can only access the beach about one hour before and one hour after low tide. The rest of the time, it is under water. As the lady in the cafe said, there's a crack in the volcano that allows the steam to surface and heat the water. We were told to go where all the people are and dig once we found hot sand. We were more fortunate than the folks next to us (they also got there before us and dug their pool) in that we dug our pool so that half of it was on cool sand and the other half on hot sand. We then diverted draining hot water to fill our pool. Their pool was totally on a hot area and they couldn't even sit in it once the tide was fully out. We were also told to take a bucket with us in case we needed to get cold water from the sea to cool down our pool. We stayed for almost 2 hours and had a great time! Check out the photos:

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully, I'll have lots of fish pictures once Ernie gets back. I can't believe that we've been on the north island almost a month now and will be going back to Blenheim at the end of the week. The time has gone so fast and we've done so much!